Category: Politics

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​Politics

House Democrats voted overwhelmingly Thursday to block additional funding for ICE, a remarkable shift from when dozens of them voted to expand the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement authority just one year ago — and a sign of how quickly the political ground has moved since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Just seven Democrats voted for the Homeland Security spending bill that included billions for Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi of New York, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Florida and Don Davis of North Carolina. All represent tough terrain — Trump carried all of their districts but Gillen’s, which he lost by just over one point.

Other Democrats, incensed by an ICE agent’s shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, voted against the bill — including many who voted exactly one year ago to pass the Laken Riley Act that allows for the detention of undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes.

One of them, Rep. Susie Lee (D-Nev.), a top GOP target in the midterms from a district Trump narrowly carried in 2024, argued this vote was different.

“What we have seen time and again is ICE has blatantly violated our Constitution and our law, whether you’re talking about the shooting of a young mother to sending a five year old thousands of miles away to entice his father to turn himself in — this type of shit is not American,” Lee said in an interview Thursday. “ICE has plenty of money … I can’t in good conscience give them any more money until we get some type of guardrails.”

Even the Democrats who voted for the funding were sharply critical of ICE.

“I hate what ICE is doing in my district and across the country. It’s atrocious. It’s appalling. We should find ways to defund those operations in a surgical way,” Gonzalez said in a brief interview, adding that he supported the bill because it also included funding for Coast Guard and FEMA operations. “But voting no, just to make a statement, could have its own repercussions.”

The House passed the DHS funding bill 220 to 207.

Democrats’ near-united stand against the bill comes amid building opposition to Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A 49 percent plurality of voters in a new POLITICO poll conducted Jan. 16 to 19 said the effort — including Trump’s widespread deployment of ICE agents across the U.S. — is too aggressive.

“The shift is dramatic. And I think the reason for the shift is: Last year the debate in the country was about getting control of the borders and out-of-control immigration. Now the entire situation is about ICE itself and its behavior,” Mark Longabaugh, a veteran Democratic strategist, said of the party’s recalibration on immigration.

Amid the growing public furor over ICE’s hardline tactics, congressional Democrats had demanded that any new Homeland Security funding come with more guardrails.

The bill most of them voted against Thursday funds ICE at $10 billion through the rest of the fiscal year that ends in September, while cutting funding for removal and enforcement operations by $115 million and Border Patrol funding by $1.8 billion. It also included some Democratic demands: decreasing the number of detention beds by 5,500, providing $20 million each for body cameras for agents and independent oversight of DHS detention facilities, and directing the department to give officers more training on diffusing conflict while interacting with the public.

It does not include other items Democrats pushed for, however, such as banning agents from wearing masks during operations, requiring judicial warrants, preventing DHS from detaining and deporting U.S. citizens and blocking the department from using other agencies’ personnel for immigration enforcement.

The Democrats who voted in favor of the funding bill argued it was preferable to the alternative — giving Trump what Cuellar described as a “blank check” to carry out his hardline immigration agenda “virtually unchecked.”

And some expressed concerns about ramifications for their districts if other agencies who receive their funding through DHS were cut off. Davis warned of the potential consequences of lapsed FEMA and Coast Guard funding in his home state of North Carolina that has been battered by storms and floods in recent years.

“Obviously we should have the honest conversations about warrants. We should have the honest conversations about taking off the masks,” Davis said Thursday. But “if we can’t consistently predict when disasters are coming our way, then we’re leaving populations of people vulnerable.”

Erin Doherty and Calen Razor contributed to this report.

​Politics

Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he wants to institute a mandatory retirement age of 75 for the president and across branches of government, a pipe dream of a call from the potential White House hopeful that would bar him from serving a second term as president.

“You’re 75 years old: done,” the former Chicago mayor and ambassador to Japan said Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event. “And that would be in the legislative branch, it’d be in the executive branch — including the Cabinet — and it’d be also in the Supreme Court, and all the federal courts.”

Emanuel, who is 66, would be 69 when sworn into office if he runs for and wins the 2028 presidential contest. He would be 73 at the start of his second term, and would, by his own standard, be unable to serve all four years. He acknowledged this when pressed by POLITICO at a Christian Science Monitor roundtable Wednesday afternoon.

“I know where I am in my age. Of course it would apply to me,” Emanuel said. “You can’t say ‘here’s what I want to do to change Washington, one of the things I want to do’ — but I get an exemption because I bought it beforehand.’”

His standard would make Donald Trump, 79, ineligible to continue serving as president. And it would have barred Joe Biden, under whom Emanuel served as ambassador to Japan, from serving his single term. It would also impact the 17 senators and 45 members of the House who are currently 75 or older.

“You can’t serve in the armed forces, you can’t serve in private sector jobs” at 75, Emanuel said. “Go work on your golf swing, it’s not that good to begin with.”

Emanuel is reigniting a debate that raged throughout the last presidential election as Biden, then 81, and Trump, then 78, each sought a second term — and as questions about Biden’s mental and physical stamina crescendoed. And it’s simmered for years on Capitol Hill as lawmakers confront mental decline and even death within their ranks.

Age limits are popular with voters who have balked in recent years at the advancing ages of the nation’s presidential contenders, lawmakers and Supreme Court justices. Roughly two-thirds of Americans support age limits for federal elected officials and the Supreme Court, polls show.

Emanuel, a former representative, said he would push for legislation to set the limit rather than attempt a constitutional amendment. (The Constitution sets a minimum age for members of Congress but not a maximum, and establishes no limits for the Supreme Court.) It’s not clear whether that legislation itself would be constitutional — and could be a tough sell in a Congress where the median age for senators is 64.

Emanuel framed the age limit as part of a broader call for “comprehensive ethics, lobbying [and] anti-corruption reform” across the federal government that he said should include a crackdown on lawmakers and judges taking gifts and stock trading. The veteran Democratic strategist said his party should be hammering that message as part of a midterms platform that also includes raising the minimum wage and instituting a bill of rights for ratepayers.

“You have a president of the United States, in my view, that has expanded, deepened the swamp. Our job is to drain the swamp as Democrats,” Emanuel said, turning Trump’s trademark phrase against him. “There’s not a day that goes by that you don’t read a story about either his family, [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick’s family or [Special Envoy Steve] Witkoff’s family making money.”

Emanuel’s choice of 75 may have been influenced by his brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, a former White House adviser and oncologist who wrote in 2014 that he did not want to live past 75. In that piece, he wrote that his view “drives my brothers crazy.”

​Politics

Rep. Julia Letlow announced her primary challenge to Sen. Bill Cassidy on Tuesday, just days after President Donald Trump lent his endorsement in the race.

The entrance of Letlow, a Louisiana Republican who has served in Congress since 2021, is a major blow to Cassidy, who was already fending off another MAGA-aligned challenger in a state Trump carried by 22 points in 2024.

“My parents taught me well. They taught me that when the Lord opens a door, you don’t walk through it — you run. It’s an honor to share with you today that I’m officially announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate,” Letlow said at an annual business event with other state leaders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, according to two people who attended the event.

Cassidy said in a statement Letlow had called him beforehand.

“She said she respected me and that I had done a good job,” he said. “I will continue to do a good job when I win re-election.”

Trump upended the primary in the Republican state over the weekend when he preemptively endorsed Letlow. “Should she decide to enter this Race, Julia Letlow has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, JULIA, RUN!!!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Letlow said that she was “honored to have President Trump’s endorsement and trust,” but did not immediately launch her bid after receiving the president’s public backing.

Cassidy, seeking a third term in the Senate, has drawn criticism from Trump after voting to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. He has also clashed with the administration at times on health care, though he was a key vote to confirm Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last year.

While Cassidy has maintained he will win, Trump’s endorsement of Letlow is a serious blow to his chances. Cassidy has told fellow GOP senators that top White House officials promised him they would stay neutral in the race, as POLITICO reported in September.

Trump’s endorsement — and Letlow’s entrance into the race — also adds a new complication for Senate GOP leadership, which has backed Cassidy.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune campaigned with Cassidy in Lousiana late last week and privately encouraged Trump to support him during a call Friday. And Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 2 GOP leader, said Tuesday he has been supporting Cassidy “from the beginning.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to build the majority,” Barrasso said when asked how much of a “headache” Trump’s endorsement is for Republicans.

Letlow first entered Congress after her husband, Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), died of COVID before entering office, and in her Tuesday speech compared her career trajectory to that of former Rep. Lindy Boggs (D-La.), who won her House seat after her husband, Rep. Hale Boggs (D-La.), died in office.

In office, Letlow has been a strong ally of both Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana’s most powerful House members.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misreported Cassidy’s whereabouts Tuesday. He did not attend the event where Letlow made her announcement, according to a spokesperson.​Politics

At least a half-dozen states applied to be in the early nominating window for 2028’s Democratic presidential campaign, kicking off a contentious battle for securing an influential perch inside the primary calendar.

The usual suspects — New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Michigan, who made up the early states in Democrats’ 2024 primary calendar, though not in the order set out by the Democratic National Committee — are all back, per their state parties. So is Iowa, hoping to reinsert itself into the process after it was bounced four years ago. Georgia also applied.

Virginia and North Carolina are both seriously considering applying, according to three people familiar with the state’s thinking and granted anonymity to describe private conversations, ahead of the deadline later Friday. Other wild-card states may also still apply before the cutoff, and the DNC declined to comment on which states have applied so far.

The presidential nominating calendar — which states are in it and in what order — will affect how Democratic presidential candidates tailor their strategies heading into a wide-open 2028 primary. It would inform which states to prioritize, where to place staff, how much money each state will cost a campaign — all calculations that have shaped previous presidential primaries. Unsurprisingly, Democrats have a lot of opinions on how that should go.

“The day after the 2026 midterms, people are going to launch into action, so the window needs to be set,” said Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party. “It’s possible they not only start coming, but they could start putting staff on the ground the earliest we’ve ever seen.”

The process to set the process could stretch deep into 2026. Members of the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee charged with setting the calendar are expected to winnow the field of applicants at their Jan. 31 meeting, according to three DNC members involved in the process and granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

States will then be invited to make presentations to the committee later that spring. One DNC member said they expected the calendar to be set over the summer and voted on by the full DNC at its August meeting, but the timeline could easily shift later into 2026.

Shaking up the presidential nominating calendar started back in 2022, after Iowa’s disastrous 2020 caucuses and accusations that the early states didn’t reflect the party’s racial diversity. Then-President Joe Biden — ahead of what was at the time expected to be a staid primary process — elevated South Carolina even earlier in the order, cut Iowa and added Michigan to the calendar.

Now, DNC officials have pledged to start the process from scratch. They’ve said they want all four regions of the country represented, as well as a potential extra state, to vote ahead of Super Tuesday. DNC members have also emphasized whether states represent racial and geographic diversity, the cost effectiveness for smaller presidential candidates and the general election competitiveness of the states.

“The early states should be swing states,” said Curtis Hertel, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. “The investments we’re making on the ground [in the primary] are beneficial to the general.”

That’s led to two fights resurfacing: For some states, it’s about just getting into the window; others want to be first. Think Iowa, Michigan and Georgia for those hoping to be invited to the early window party. All three are vying to either return or get into it for the first time.

For Georgia, the path is more complicated. Democrats don’t currently hold the governor’s mansion or the Legislature and almost assuredly won’t have a trifecta after the midterms, meaning they’d need GOP cooperation to move up their primary should the state be selected. But Georgia Democrats are confident they could adjust their date.

“Even if there is a Republican [governor],” after the 2026 election, “Republicans in the past have very much wanted theirs to be earlier as well,” said Charlie Bailey, the Georgia Democratic Party’s chair. “All the logic in the world points to Republicans wanting to move up in their process for their own reasons.”

The second group — including Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina — are all pushing for the influential first-place slot. Nevada, in particular, has been aggressive in their lobbying push of DNC members. New Hampshire released a memo last fall, emphasizing they wouldn’t just rely on a “tradition” argument to maintain their first-in-the-nation status.

South Carolina, too, said it wants to keep its spot, after Biden elevated them to the coveted first official spot. (New Hampshire, however, still held its primary first in 2024 despite threats from the DNC, as required under state law.)

“Our hope is that we maintain the position, but, of course, we’ll fully respect the decision and wishes of the RBC, even if we are unhappy,” said Parmley, the South Carolinian.

In a statement, RBC Co-chairs Jim Roosevelt and Minyon Moore said: “The Rules and Bylaws Committee is committed to running a rigorous, efficient, and fair process that will deliver the strongest presidential nominee for our party. We look forward to continuing that work later this month when the committee begins consideration of state applications to hold their contest in the early window of the 2028 Democratic presidential nominating process.”

Samuel Benson contributed to this report. A version of this article first appeared in POLITICO Pro’s Morning Score. Want to receive the newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.

​Politics

James Talarico has leapt ahead in the Texas Senate Democratic primary with a 9-point lead over Rep. Jasmine Crockett, according to new polling from Emerson College released Thursday.

The data shows Talarico, a state representative from Austin, leading the Dallas Congress member by 47 percent to 38 percent ahead of their March 3 primary.

When Crockett jumped into the race in December, her national prominence and fundraising strength had some expecting her to take the lead in the primary. But Talarico has poured money into his campaign and built a large online following.

On the GOP side, the poll shows a tight race: Attorney General Ken Paxton leads Sen. John Cornyn by 1 point, at 27 to 26 percent, with Rep. Wesley Hunt sitting at 16 percent support. The race is widely expected to head to a May 26 runoff since no candidate is close to 50 percent support, which would extend the brutal GOP primary.

Democrats have long pined for winning statewide in Texas yet repeatedly fallen short. The party believes it can ride an anticipated electoral wave fueled by opposition to Trump to finally achieve that goal. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told POLITICO earlier this week that he views Texas as a “very possible” pickup opportunity but didn’t list it among the party’s top four offensive opportunities.

There’s a stark racial split between Talarico’s and Crockett’s blocs of support. Talarico brings in majority support from Hispanic and white voters, while the large majority of Black voters back Crockett, according to the poll’s findings. Men support Talarico 52 percent to 30 percent, while women are evenly divided between the two, at 44 and 43 percent respectively.

Many Republican voters remain outraged at Cornyn for supporting a bipartisan gun control bill during the Biden administration and have threatened to vote him out of office as punishment. Paxton, Texas’ top attorney for a decade, has strong support from the MAGA base, despite facing multiple state and federal investigations.

Democrats are hoping that Paxton will win the GOP primary, believing his political baggage would turn off voters in the general election. The poll shows both Talarico and Crockett tied with Paxton at 46 percent in a hypothetical matchup. Cornyn would fare better: He would lead Talarico 47 to 44 percent, and Crockett 48 to 43 percent.

The economy stands as the top issue for Texas voters, followed by immigration and threats to democracy.

​Politics

In 2024, economic anxiety and immigration concerns drove Latino voters to President Donald Trump. Those same issues are beginning to push them away.

Across the country, the cost-of-living woes and immigration enforcement overshadowing Trump’s first year back in office are souring Hispanic businesspeople, a key constituency that helped propel him to the White House. In a recent survey of Hispanic business owners conducted by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared exclusively with POLITICO, 42 percent said their economic situation is getting worse, while only 24 said it was getting better. Seventy percent of respondents ranked the cost of living as a top-three issue facing the country, more than double the number that selected any other issue.

That’s a particularly striking number from this group: nearly two-thirds of respondents in the organization’s final survey before the 2024 election said they trusted Trump more than then-Vice President Kamala Harris to handle the economy.

“The broader Hispanic community certainly feels let down,” said Javier Palomarez, the organization’s president and CEO. “It would be different if immigration and the economy had not been principal talking points for [Trump]. On both fronts, we didn’t get what we thought we were going to get.”

The combination of ongoing economic uncertainty and stubbornly high prices driven by Trump’s tariffs — coupled with the economic impact of the Trump administration’s ongoing raids in immigrant-heavy communities — makes the situation increasingly dire for some Hispanic business owners.

Trump and his allies argue that they’re just cleaning up the mess left by the previous president.

“Republicans are putting in the work to fix the Bidenflation mess we inherited. From lowering inflation to creating a housing plan, President Trump is fighting for the working families Democrats left behind,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Delanie Bomar.

Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told POLITICO about a South Phoenix restaurant hit hard by tariffs and labor shortages. Then, a series of ICE raids in the parking lot in front of the restaurant caused customers and workers to stop showing up and forced the owners to shut it down for several days. She predicted this kind of situation will blow back on Republicans in the next election.

“We certainly do sense that our members — our clients in Arizona and across the country — feel a sense of betrayal by this administration, given its excessive overreach,” Villalobos said. “Now that we’ve had a taste of [the Trump administration], I think you’re going to see a big shift [in the vote].”

In 2024, Trump won 48 percent of self-described Hispanic or Latino voters, the highest mark for a Republican presidential candidate in at least a half-century, driven largely by economic anxiety. But polling shows Trump’s approval among Latino voters cratering as their satisfaction with the economy and immigration enforcement plummet.

In a November POLITICO Poll, a plurality — 48 percent — of Hispanic respondents said the cost of living in the U.S. is “the worst I can ever remember it being,” and a majority (67 percent) said responsibility lies with the president to fix it.

According to a November Pew Research poll, about two-thirds (68 percent) of U.S. Hispanics say their situation today is worse than it was a year ago, and just nine percent say it is better; 65 percent of Latinos disagree with this administration’s approach to immigration, and a majority (52 percent) said they worried they, a family member or a close friend could be deported, a ten-point increase since March.

Trump’s net favorability rating among Hispanics is now at 28 percent, per a recent The Economist/YouGov poll, 13 points lower than it was in February of last year.

“Small business owners are becoming a swing constituency, when you think about the midterms coming up,” said Tayde Aburto, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce. “And not because their values have changed—it’s just because their costs did.”

Latino voters have swung hard back toward Democrats in recent elections as well. In Passaic County, New Jersey, Latinos voted narrowly for Trump in 2024 but in November backed Democratic Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill by double digits. And in Miami, where over 70 percent of residents are Hispanic, a Democratic mayor was elected last month for the first time in 28 years last month.

Those elections are a referendum on Trump’s economy, said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic strategist and adviser to newly-elected Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins’ campaign.

“[Trump’s] agenda literally does little to nothing to help Hispanic families,” Ulvert said. “Worse, it preys on Hispanic families. And what we heard on the campaign trail most pointedly is the old adage: is my life better today than it was yesterday under new leaders? And resoundingly, not only verbally, but through the ballot box throughout the year, Hispanic families are saying, ‘no, my life is actually worse.’”

Joe Vichot, the Republican Party chair in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, said he knows many Hispanic Republicans in Allentown who are supportive of curbing illegal immigration and fighting crime. “But there’s also stories of people who have been here for 10 years or more with their family, but they’ve never been legal, that are now caught up into the [deportation] system,” he said.

“There should be a way to find some type of common ground where that won’t happen.”

The White House has tried to ease the ailing economic sentiment by sending Trump and Vice President JD Vance on the road, delivering a series of stump speeches on affordability in working-class areas, including Vance’s Dec. 16 stop in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, which includes the Hispanic-majority city of Allentown. They insist the economy deserves an “A+++” grade, and are now buoyed by a December consumer price index report released Tuesday that showed inflation rising at a slower pace than expected.

“Joe Biden gave us a colossal catastrophe, but my administration has rapidly and very decisively ended that,” Trump said during a speech in Detroit Tuesday. “We have quickly achieved the exact opposite of stagflation — almost no inflation and super high growth.”

But cooling inflation rates just mean prices aren’t rising as fast as they had been — prices still remain much higher on many goods than they had been in recent years. And improving macroeconomic trends are not yet being felt by consumers, said Massey Villarreal, a business executive in Houston.

“I’m like most Americans. I hear the inflation number and I don’t translate it to my going to the grocery store, when I look at the cost of hamburger meat,” said Villarreal, a former chair of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Palomarez, the U.S. Hispanic Business Council president, compared it to the Biden administration’s insistence that the post-Covid economy was healthy, even as consumer sentiment plunged. “While we were talking about GDP and unemployment and jobs growth rates, people were worried about the rent and the price of gas and the price of eggs. And we’ve got kind of the same thing here,” he said.

In Chicago, where some of the most-publicized immigration enforcement occurred last year, Hispanic-run businesses have been hit hard. Sam Sanchez, CEO of Third Coast Hospitality, said 2025 was the hardest period for business of his four decades in restauranteering, aside from the COVID pandemic.

“It sends a really negative message to the 48 percent of Hispanic voters that voted for President Trump,” Sanchez said. “Everything’s just starting to fall apart.”

​Politics

Virginia Democrats are launching their last big campaign in the redistricting wars this week — but big questions loom about whether they can agree on how to maximize benefits to their party and whether they can convince voters to support their power grab.

On Wednesday, the Virginia Legislature kicks off its first session since Democrats won unified control of the commonwealth in last November’s elections. A persistent divide has emerged however, between Democrats who hope to draw an aggressive gerrymander that could deliver them 10 of the state’s 11 congressional seats — a four-seat grab for their side that would wipe out all but one GOP congressional district — and those who want to take a more subtle approach to offsetting GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

“It will be a real debate. I mean, we want to get as much as we can, but we also want the referendum to pass,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon, adding that an expected Supreme Court decision this year on the Voting Rights Act could ultimately give Republicans more seats.

“[Democrats] basically have voting rights act seats in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana,” he said. “They could all be gone, right? So that’s a great concern. So it’s essential in Virginia that we look at the fairness argument from a national perspective, not just the Commonwealth.”

Virginia’s current congressional delegation has six Democrats and five Republicans, so under the new maps Democrats would likely pick up three or four seats.

Democrats are worried that some of their members won’t be as eager to take on so much in such a truncated period of time. The party will need to be unified if they stand any chance of selling voters on the urgency of empowering legislators to draw new Congressional lines within a matter of weeks.

“I haven’t heard a lot of people talking about how much work it’s going to be to pass it,” said one Virginia Democrat granted anonymity to discuss internal party discussions. The person added that some in the party are underestimating the amount of time and political capital it will take to prop up a statewide campaign for what is expected to be a special election in April.

The National Democratic Redistricting Commission, the party’s group leading the charge on redistricting, confirmed to POLITICO it has presented two new maps to Virginia lawmakers. One remakes the map into a 9-2 configuration that only provides cover for districts held by Republican Reps. Ben Cline and Morgan Griffith from being eliminated. Another proposed map largely leaves intact Griffiths’ seat and, if approved, could deliver a 10-1 map, a development first reported by Punchbowl News.

John Bisognano, the NDRC president, argues that aggressive changes to the current Virginia congressional maps are necessary to respond to brazen gerrymanders Republicans drew in other states under pressure from President Donald Trump.

“Not for one second has Donald Trump laid down arms in this redistricting manufactured war that he created,” he said, adding that Democrats have so far fought him nearly to a draw after states like Indiana rebuffed Trump’s pressure campaign to take up recasting the state’s congressional lines.

Emboldened by their better-than-expected wins in statewide elections last year, Virginia’s legislative leaders say they want to eliminate as many GOP seats as possible.

“I said in August of 2025 that the maps will be 10-1 and I’m sticking with that today,” Virginia state Senate President Pro Tem L. Louise Lucas recently posted on social media. “Anyone in the congressional delegation who wants a seat needs to campaign for it and not expect a safe seat.”

Virginia’s Democratic House Speaker Don Scott also previously said he’s open to a 10-1 map that favors his party. Scott and Lucas did not respond to requests for comment.

State Sen. Ryan McDougle, the top Republican in Virginia’s upper chamber, criticized Democrats’ redistricting push just five years after voters passed a constitutional amendment that gave the authority to draw legislative and congressional lines to a bipartisan commission of state lawmakers and citizens. And he argued it would mark the permanent end of independent redistricting in the state.

“If this goes through, I find it hard to believe that we will not return to a path of gerrymandering in the future, because if [Democrats] can do it … I’m sure somebody will come up with a situation in the future that is just as egregious and do it back.”

McDougle is a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking to block Democrats from what it says is “an unconstitutional redistricting amendment.”

“It’s an illegal and unconstitutionally passed measure,” said Michael Young, a Virginia-based Republican consultant working to block Democrats’ redistricting push in the state. Previous conservative-led legal challenges to the current redistricting battles in Virginia have so far been unsuccessful.

Virginia’s redistricting effort comes days after Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a special legislative session in April focused on mid-cycle redistricting that some predict could net Republicans between three to five seats. DeSantis said he wants to wait until April so he can get “guidance” from the Supreme Court since the justices are expected to rule later this year in a landmark voting rights case that could prohibit states from considering race when drawing new districts and give Republicans a freer hand to erase minority-majority districts. Some predict that, depending on the ruling, the high court’s decision could help Republicans gain upwards of 19 seats across several states.

“We know we have work to do, and I think we understand the assignment,” said state Sen. Lamont Bagby, who also serves as the chair of the Virginia Democratic Party.

Bagby said his party needs other Democratic-led states to join California, which passed a ballot initiative in November to help thwart Trump’s push to eliminate seats currently held by Democrats in red-leaning states. Already, Texas, North Carolina, and Missouri have changed their maps, though some GOP-led states like Indiana have bucked the president. Bagby said if Democrats stand any chance of taking back the House, they need to fight using new rules of engagement that Republicans are utilizing.

“They’ve already done enough to force us to put this to voters,” Bagby said. “I don’t think anything’s changed.”

An unanswered question is how big of a role the incoming Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who will be sworn in on Saturday, will play in the redistricting fight. She bested her GOP gubernatorial challenger Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points and Republicans lost at least 13 seats in the House of Delegates. A week before those elections, Democrats approved the first step of a multi-step process to amend the state’s constitution to redraw congressional lines before the next Census in 2030.

In an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday she expressed a desire to make good on campaign promises of making life more affordable for Virginians, but made no mention of redistricting. During a POLITICO forum in Richmond last month, she stopped short of embracing a redistricting overhaul that other governors have championed, including Gavin Newsom of California.

After the Legislature gavels in on Wednesday, lawmakers are expected to pass another amendment that will pave the way for Spanberger to call a special election in the spring. That election will allow voters to decide whether to give state lawmakers authority to amend the state constitution and approve new congressional maps.

“In light of what Texas, Missouri and now, Florida seem to be doing, it seems like we have a right to be in a position where we can take action if … Virginia voters allow us to do so,” Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat, said in an interview.

Surovall said he does not foresee any major hurdles to a new map passage, though he anticipates there will need to be some reworking of the elections calendar to accommodate new candidate filing deadlines for federal House races once new maps are approved. The current deadline for House candidates is April 2, according to the Virginia Department of Elections.

​Politics